Georgian President, Polish officials pay homage to Georgian theologist killed in Auschwitz
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili on Tuesday attended an event in Poland marking the 80th anniversary of Georgian martyr Grigol Peradze’s death. Photo: President’s press office
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Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili and Polish Government officials on Tuesday paid homage to Grigol Peradze, a Georgian scholar, theologist, historian and professor killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
Addressing the public at the Auschwitz Museum on the 80th anniversary of Peradze’s death, Zourabichvili called him a “symbol of hope” whose “self-sacrifice and bravery showed the virtues that we should all remember”.
Describing Auschwitz - a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by the Nazis in occupied Poland - as the “closest thing we have on Earth to the gates of hell” and the “darkest, most shameful episode of humanity”, the Georgian official also pointed to Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
St. Grigol Peradze is a symbol of hope.
— Salome Zourabichvili (@Zourabichvili_S) December 6, 2022
In the midst of violence, of the darkest page in mankind’s history, his self-sacrifice and bravery showed the virtues that we should all remember.
Hope can defeat the worst of evil.
80 years since his martyrdom, we remember his memory. pic.twitter.com/TqfDt9AlfJ
Even today there are places where people treat people in a way that we should condemn - in Bucha [and] Irpin”, the official said in reference to the Ukrainian towns where hundreds of people were reportedly tortured and killed by Russian troops during the ongoing conflict.
Calling Peradze - who had refused to cooperate with the Nazis and entered a cell at the camp in place of a Jewish parent of several children - “a man with European values”, the Georgian President noted his studies in Berlin, Warsaw, Paris and London and said his presence and role in the history “gives me a hope” for the future.
Peradze is the person who gives us, Georgians, the belief that we can be different, that we have other abilities and other virtues, and we must return to these virtues [instead of hatred of each other]”, Zourabichvili said.
At the @AuschwitzMuseum. This place is probably the closest thing we have on Earth to the gates of hell. It represents the darkest, most shameful episode of humanity.
— Salome Zourabichvili (@Zourabichvili_S) December 6, 2022
We want to believe that such a horror is a thing of the past. But hatred remains a reality.#NeverAgain pic.twitter.com/OCNCaVrPpe
During the day, Georgian and Polish post services also issued a joint stamp in memory of the historical figure to mark the date.
The 22-year-old Peradze was forced to leave Georgia to escape the Bolshevik regime following the Red Army invasion of the country in 1921 and found refuge in Europe. While abroad, he began active scientific research collecting and studying Georgian manuscripts, before giving up secular life and becoming a monk.
Symbolic gestures like this remain in history as examples of cooperation.
— Salome Zourabichvili (@Zourabichvili_S) December 6, 2022
Today, the @GeorgianPost and @PocztaPolska issue a joint stamp in memory of St. Grigol Peradze. pic.twitter.com/nvkz0mKjdT
As a foreign citizen, he was permitted to leave Poland during the Nazi invasion, but refused to do so and instead worked to protect Jews from Nazi repressions following their invasion and occupation of the country in 1939. For his actions and refusal to cooperate with the occupation regime, Peradze was confined at Auschwitz and killed in a gas chamber at the age of 43, becoming one of at least 464 priests, seminarians and monks killed by the Nazis in Poland.